1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a distributed file management method for performing distributed management of files between computers connected in a peer-to-peer manner and a program therefor and, more particularly, to a distributed file management method in which computers use open disk resources on a network to perform distributed management of files and a method therefor.
2. Description of the Related Arts
In recent years, most of computers are connected to networks, and resources such as files and printers are popularly shared by the computers connected through the networks.
The resource sharing by using a network is expanded to disks serving as CPU resources of computers connected through the network. A user has a sufficient free area on her/his disk opens the disk on the network to make it possible to use the disk by other users. For example, a dedicated folder is formed to open a disk on a network, the folder is shared, and the access type of the folder is set as a full access type to make it possible to use the folder for an access of another computer connected to the network.
However, at the present, in order to use the resources of another computer by a user, the user herself/himself must designate a location of the resources. For example, when a user of a computer intends to use a free disk of another computer, the user does not know a disk of a specific computer to be used. The user must actually access a computer connected to the network to search the disk, and the user takes heavy labor and long time to use the free disk. When large-capacity data is shared through a network, a cache technique is important. In a conventional cache technique, cache data is managed and stored in only a specific server. For this reason, cache performance is determined by the server, and a large cache considerably increases cost. For this reason, it is difficult to cope with the large cache.